Planets in Science Fiction

Several generations of science fiction plots have been set on celestial bodies other than the Earth, with the Moon and Mars being the favorite locations inside the Solar System during in the early decades of the genre. While the Moon and Mars are perennial favorites as locations, fictional planets beyond Sol System predominated as settings in more recent decades.

During the first decades of science fiction Mars was probably the most common extraterrestrial location for science fiction stories because little was known about its surface conditions before the first Mariner space probes. Astronomer Percival Lowell's conviction that he had observed canals on Mars was taken at face value by many and writers like Robert A. Heinlein and Ray Bradbury imagined the red planet as resembling the American Southwest, an arid world with an elder and presumably dying race. In contemporary science, Mars is now depicted primarily as a planet successfully terraformed by authors like John Barnes and Kim Stanley Robinson or as the location for archaeological excavations of alien ruins by authors like Geoffrey A. Landis. During the early-to-mid 20th century Venus was also a popular setting. Earth's sister planet was usually depicted as a warm, wet, jungle-covered and marsh-covered world where life was plentiful, with often thinly-veiled allegories of the European colonization of tropical Africa or Southeast Asia. Subsequent science fiction stories about extrasolar terrestrial planets have tended to continue the tradition of seeing them as either deserts or swamps. Creativity, in short, has been lacking.

Note that the names of planets described in the doctrines of some religious groups, the faux planets in parodies and the hypothetical planets in nonfiction popular science are strikingly similar to names of fictional planets in science fiction.

Contents

The following is a list of extra-solar planets, moons and asteroids appearing in science fiction novels, short stories, films, television series and videogames. Moons and asteroids are indicated by (moon) after the named object. Where possible page numbers in the source or series name and date of the television episode together with alternative names are also indicated.

Although the names of many of the gods of classical Greco-Roman religion are employed to name extra-solar worlds, many authors have adopted rough naming conventions that depart significantly from that used in the Sol System to date. The planets named in Isaac Asimov's Foundation series betray a familiarity with the real place names of the ancient Eastern Mediterranean. The planets named in the Star Wars universe often combine consonants un-separated by vowels and vowels un-separated by consonants. The worlds of Star Wars suffer from repetition; for example compare Tatooine, Dantooine, Handooine and Klatooine or compare Dagobah and Xagobah.

Keith Laumer employs the amusingly homespun place naming convention of the American West. Despite the historical example of American states and cities, Canadian provinces and cities, and islands in the South Pacific comparatively few planets are named by placing the words “New” or ‘Nova” before the name of an existing place name in Europe. Charles Stross is the major exception to this generalization.

Most of the planets named by science fiction authors are either clearly very Earth-like or are hostile rocks with thin atmosphere. Planets like the large number of gas giants discovered by astronomers in the last decade are rare. So too are terrestrial planets marginal for human habitation. Terrestrial planets are often designated with a Roman numeral "III" to indicate that they are the third planet from their star, a reflection of the fact that the only known terrestrial world is the third planet from its star.

Waystonn (moon) - John Barnes's short story "The Lost Princess Man" in The New Space Opera 2

We Made It - Larry Niven's Protector brief reference, and "Neutron Star," "At the Core," "Flatlander," "The Ethics of Madness," and "The Handicapped," short stories in Larry Niven's collection Neutron Star